How I vote or indeed if I vote will depend on the candidates. I have serious disagreements with all of the parties.
Neil and Wilson talking about money and Europe can maybe wait until the afterlife or something.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
We need a Scottish Parliament election thread
(1355 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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It's quite relevant - maybe more to the indyref2 thread - but Wilson is the person that has written (as I understand from the discussion) SNP policy on keeping the £ and also how it might join the EU again 10 or 20 so years after we leave the union.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Andrew W might have been the last person I spoke to in a pub........
Posted 4 years ago # -
“
Delighted and honoured to have been selected as the
@ScotTories
candidate for Edinburgh Eastern at next years Scottish Parliament election.“
https://twitter.com/CllrGrahamHutch/status/1340242432294842369
Posted 4 years ago # -
“but Wilson is the person that has written (as I understand from the discussion) SNP policy on keeping the £”
Think that was ‘then’.
Has he been updating it?
Is it still the SNP policy?
(Genuine questions, I don’t want to watch the video!)
Posted 4 years ago # -
"Is it still the SNP policy?"
Wilson seems to think so. Also didn't like admitting EU membership was likely at least 15 years after separation because of Scotland's fiscal position. Hard 10 or 20 years, but worth it after that.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@baldycyclist. Apart from you could you ascertain how many other people watched this vid-ay-oh
Even if I was paid a lot of money to do so I would not watch it.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I love the idea of Andrew Neil as gatekeeper to the EU. Like the random guy I once watched direct the fire brigade to an incident with his badminton racket, like those guys at the airport.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@ Baldcyclist
Thanks
Anyone who can imagine what will be happening in 20 years is bold.
Posted 4 years ago # -
"Apart from you could you ascertain how many other people watched this vid-ay-oh"
According to YouTube 93000, you don't have to watch to ascertain that.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Yes @baldyclist but my great fear is that I have to see any of the footage if I go anywhere near it. So thanks for this datum.
93000 is staggering when you think only 23000 have looked at the Majestic Arrows on Spotify and they are incredibly good.
Oh wait, their top track has 268000 spots. The tear in the space time continuum has been repaired and the mighty CCE now has no excuse not to know about The Majestic Arrows
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS, yes that was my first instinct too, to vote based on the candidate. I've done it before for the constituency vote.
However in my constituency, without Wightman (who was the SGP constituency candidate) I have Callum Laidlaw the Tory/Unionist (never), Rebecca Bell the Lib Dem (unlikely), Katrina Faccenda for Labour (who???), and finally Ben MacPherson for the SNP. At the last election he struck me as a rather smarmy, cookie-cutter politician with no discernible principles, nor convictions about anything other than getting elected. I'm not convinced I'll be voting for yet another sharp suited lawyer who effortlessly works his way up the ministerial ladder. Doubtless he'll get in anyway...
Might take another look at the Labour candidate, who at least appears to be a socialist. However, with Sir Keith de-prioritising Scotland in the quest for power in Westminster, I'm not sure about that party at all.
As for the regional vote, it's all party lists, unless there are some maverick independents standing it doesn't look appealing frankly.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowriver, KF seems reasonable in her politics and will give you a correctly regulated Guided Tour.
Posted 4 years ago # -
In NL green parties have all split. Following this model in Scotland would suit the major parties fine but in my view a retrograde step. Without green influence at Holyrood, Energy Saving Trust would not be making e-bike + e-cargo bike loans available. Look at rUK which hadn't same policy. England's sole Green is outnumbered 500+ to one.
Electric vehicles are of course main interest but a bit dead end if you really want modal shift and not just get bogged down with infra for cars. (Charging points etc)Posted 4 years ago # -
@Crowriver
I came across Ben during his quest for a seat in Holyrood at a community event in Granton. I thought he was a highly polished young vanilla pod. Now he is a minister and I know someone works for him but yet I still know almost nothing about how or what he thinks.
I will have;
Miles Briggs (the drugs that would cause me to vote for him have not yet been synthesised),
Daniel Johnson (I know him and he is OK, but also a quite right-wing nationalist),
Fred Mackintosh QC (who sent me a questionnaire but refused to fill mine in so he can take a leap at himself)
Catriona MacDonald (of whom I know little other than that she has a cafe in Tollcross)
Maybe a Green candidate (but given that Andy no longer feels at home in the party I can't imagine I'd feel comfortable voting for them)Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS, there's a link to a mini-profile of Catriona MacDonald below. Even a wee viddoe too. She seems human, but be warned there is a spurious mention of "cycle infrastructure" in relation to (ahem) a somewhat contentious planning application. Try not to blow a fuse at this well-meaning, if perhaps poorly informed attempt to say the right things...
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowriver
Thanks. Human indeed, but the 'clear and unambiguous commitment to halting Brexit stuff' is galling. That was never more than a comforting fantasy.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Don’t know what this actually means. No previous mention of which policy -
“
“It expands the cycle infrastructure to encourage people to leave their cars at home and get travelling more actively. I was there to support them and I was so so pleased that the council decided to go against the policy and to listen to the community and actually take the decision to approve the proposal.
“
Posted 4 years ago # -
I'm not an SNP voter but I like Catriona MacDonald. I am convinced her principles are good ones and she is indeed Human - she's been vocal in supporting the Quiet Route plans and our bike buses etc and I very much appreciate it.
I think you could rightly say she is inexperienced but frankly I'm not sure "experience" in politics is always that positive a characteristic. I am all in favour of young, principled, intelligent people coming forward to represent their communities - particularly if they are not privileged white men.
I agree also there's a lot of no doubt party advised vacuous comforting words there.
I am gutted Andy Wightman has left and I still don't understand. I'm not voting for Daniel Johnson this time - I have yet to figure it out.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@chdot, I presume the planning policy? That development may have had strong local support, but it's a poorly considered one, to say the least. Bromides about active travel cannot disguise yet another car based out of town shopping "experience"...
Posted 4 years ago # -
The development has strong local support purely because it's not housing. The amenities it will provide are (mostly) very welcome, but anything that wasn't houses would have been popular.
There will be some useful active travel improvements - mostly additional pedestrian crossings, and they included a connection to the adjacent Gilmerton-Roslin cycle path, although they didn't appear to have actually considered the amount of space necessary to do so - they just shoehorned it into the plan.
All that said, it's still an incredibly car-dominated proposal - "It expands the cycle infrastructure to encourage people to leave their cars at home and get travelling more actively." is just not true.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@ Crowriver
Probably
But I still don’t know/understand whether ‘community action’ got cycle provision that wasn’t there before. Could be read that they got it taken out!
Posted 4 years ago # -
@chdot,
If I remember right, cycle provision was added following initial consultation. I wouldn't like to guess whether that was due to "community action", though.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I’m using ‘action’ in a way that would cover consultation.
Seems to be like so many other developments, getting there by means other than cars is ‘forgotten’ about.
Then someone (usually Spokes) points it out and sometimes something gets added on.
20 years ago ‘active travel’ wasn’t on the agenda much.
10 years ago it was perhaps not really understood or even resisted ‘no one cycles’ etc.
NOW for it NOT to be routine for developers to include it (even if only as a result of Planning insisting) is scandalous/pathetic.
(Note discussions elsewhere about Spokes & Sustrans having ‘too much influence’!!)
Posted 4 years ago # -
Am I right in assuming that Keir starmer has signalled that they’ve given up on Scotland?
Posted 4 years ago # -
@SRD
It's possible that they are so lost here that the text was a genuine mistake.
Back in the day they had serious characters on the ground who knew what was up here and could insert stuff in speeches delivered by London-based speakers. George Foulkes and Richard Leonard don't know what they had for breakfast.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Somebody please explain to me, exactly what qualifications or experience Ben MacPherson has for his new job as Minister for Rural Affairs?
Is it just that he's a member of Clan MacPherson? Is that all that's required?
Because from where I'm standing, he's spent most of his life in Edinburgh, and the nearest he got to the countryside was a football pitch. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is he in fact a rural Laird? A crofter? A fisherman? A keen Munro bagger?
Posted 4 years ago # -
That's an interesting one. His new boss is under the watchful eye of his party's activist wing. Suspected of being rather too cosy with some landed interests.
Mr MacPherson may be there to take a take a rather less traditional view of these things. It will be him who now has to deal with the licencing of grouse moors. Not a bad choice for that, an urban lawyer.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@crowriver it’s nearly always a bad thing when a minister has too much knowledge of/interest in their new ministry. My heart always sinks when a newly appointed minister tells me eg “how much they love Botswana”. (And that’s before we get to the vested interests /connections/networks that follow from that).
Posted 4 years ago # -
@SRD, well yes if they know too much I can see how that might lead to biases creeping in. If they know nothing though? Then surely you get a Chris Grayling / Gavin Williamson / Dominic Raab type of "leadership"?
Posted 4 years ago #
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